TPAO plans to drill more wells at Gabar oil field

ANKARA

The state-owned TPAO plans to open 10 more oil wells at the southeastern Gabar area by the end of the year that will boost the daily production to 35,000 barrels.

The number of the oil wells will reach a total of 29, officials said, noting that presently there are 19 wells at the Şehit Aybüke Yalçın and Şehit Esma Çevik oil fields.

According to officials, some 80 to 100 wells will be drilled at those two fields in the next two years.

Presently, daily oil production at Gabar is 25,000 barrels.

In May this year, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced the discovery of oil reserves with a potential daily production capacity of 100,000 barrels in the Gabar region in the southeastern province of Şırnak.

The aim is to reach oil production of 200,000 barrels a day with daily production from the fields in Gabar amounting to 100,000 barrels at the end of 2024, officials said.

“If this target is met, Türkiye will be able to meet 20 percent of its oil need by domestic resources,” they added.

Türkiye has been working to reduce its dependency on energy imports. It discovered a large natural gas reserves in the Black Sea.

Oil production in the Gabar region will help reduce the current account deficit, Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek said last month.

The minister noted that oil production in Gabar will meet 10 percent of Türkiye’s needs in 2024.

“Thus, the current account deficit will decrease permanently, and reserve accumulation will accelerate,” Şimşek wrote on the social media platform X.

Türkiye’s energy import bill shrank nearly 29 percent in the first ten months of 2023 to $57.3 billion, the latest foreign trade data showed.

In the medium-term program, the government forecasts that the energy imports will pick up from an estimated $71 billion this year to $77.3 billion in 2024 but decline to $75.7 billion in 2026.